If you kick around the intellectual community for any time at all, you will undoubtedly encounter the Transhumanists and Singularitiarians. If you look at our suggested reading list for polymaths, you will see Ray Kurzweil’s book, ‘The Singularity is Near’. That is because the book is influential, not because it is particularly accurate.
Kurzweil accepts that technologies develop and mature along a path known as an S-curve. He then makes the claim that, in cases such as computing capacity, S-curves follow one another sequentially to form a geometric curve. (page 43) In this, he is mistaken. The same forces that cause an individual technology to follow an S-curve applies to the function, such as computing capacity per constant dollar, itself. Consequently, it will follow a super S-Curve.
When electromechanical computation began to reach its maturity, it was relatively easy to find a technology that had more potential. It was the relay. When the relay began to reach its maturity, it was a little more difficult and costly to find a new technology with greater potential. It was the vacuum tube. When the vacuum tube began to reach its maturity it was even more difficult and costly to develop a new technology. It was the transistor.
The current technology, the silicon based integrated circuit, is approaching its limits. The number of components that can be put on a chip will continue to increase at least until 2019. However, the computing power that can be purchased for a constant dollar amount appears to be reaching its limit by 2014. In other words, after 2014, you will be able to get a more powerful CPU, but it is going to cost you more.
There is a replacement technology, carbon nanotubes, that appears capable of exceeding the performance of silicon based chips. However, the most enthusiastic proponents do not claim that the cross-over point will occur before 2020. Additionally, there is currently no strong evidence that their price performance can exceed current technology by then, if ever. It appears that we are reaching the flex point of the Super S-Curve of computation. In other words, human equivalent computing capacity for $1,000 is likely by 2030. However, after that progress is likely to slow down dramatically.
While the future of immortal humans and god-like computers is not likely in the 21st Century, the next twenty years are going to be extraordinarily exciting. Due to a number of economic and technological forces, robotic performance in practice is lagging far behind theory. The computing capacity that can be purchased today for $1,000 would have cost $250,000,000 just twenty years ago. However, in the same period, the cost of a similar robot has only decreased by 75%.
This is about to change. Robotics and artificial intelligence are about to explode. The 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, for robotics and artificial intelligence, was something like the Apollo Project for space exploration. It was ahead of its time, but it demonstrated just how far behind we were in the implementation of robotics.
By 2030, even households of moderate means will have robots cooking their meals, washing their clothes, cleaning their house and chauffeuring them around. In fact, their home will be primarily robotically built. Manufacturing plants will not only be completely automated, the production of robots will be completely automated as well. In the office, purchasing, inventory control, accounts payable, accounts receivable, cash management and more will be performed by intelligent computer programs with nominal human oversight. Civilization will literally become a slave economy. However, unlike the first round of slavery, robots are completely uninterested in consuming to a level proportional to their production. They are not interested in asserting their will or exercising freedoms. And, if anyone built such robots, people wouldn't buy them.
We are just now entering the bottom of the geometric growth of installed robotics and artificial intelligence. It should be expected that the process will be messy and contentious. However, it will take place. In fact, between 2000 and 2005, Japan’s growth in robot exports was increasing at a rate of 20% to 35% per year. While the global economic slowdown hit robot sales hard, the recovery will begin in 2010 and is expected to be significant.
It is only a matter of time before this level of growth will over-run a GDP per Capita growth rate of under 3%. Conservatively, we would expect household income to double by 2020 and quadruple by 2030. For those who wish to enter the Information Age knowledge professions the increase in standard of living will be even more pronounced and happen even faster. When we state that people who choose to enter a knowledge profession today will be earning 250K within three years and 500K within five years, that is not hyperbole or hype. It is simply what knowledge professions will be earning in the Information Age.
So, while significantly less dramatic that what is predicted by Singularitarians, we still expect a dramatic and positive next twenty years. Singularitarians seem to make the admirable error of assuming that everything that can go right, will go right. It won’t. However, much of it will, though generally later than expected. Even now, we are beginning to see that S-Curves aggregate to make a Super S-Curve, not a geometric curve. However, the generally pessimistic view of the future promulgated by many of the more mainstream media is even more unrealistic. As Polymathica grows and expands the assumption that an Information Age Income Explosion is imminent is critical to proper planning.
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